'Winter Wonderettes' is wonderfully playful

For most of the so-called "jukebox musicals" that have steadily gained popularity over the last two decades, an almost too-simple formula seems to hold sway.

Create a fictional group of singers, set them in rock-'n'-roll's earliest years, then load the show with original vocal and musical arrangements of that period's most popular songs.

As Roger Bean has carved a successful career within the genre, it's no surprise he's behind some of its best creations.

Put "Winter Wonderettes" squarely in that column. The holiday-oriented sequel to Bean's immensely popular "The Marvelous Wonderettes" is almost better than the original – a fact for which McCoy Rigby Entertainment and La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts' current staging holds ample proof.

The setting is the generic town of Springfield in December 1968. Betty Jean (Julia Dixon Jackson), who has risen to sales manager of the local hardware store, organizes her boss' annual holiday party, inviting her lifelong pals Cindy Lou, Suzy and Missy.

The quartet plans to use the occasion as a reunion of the Marvelous Wonderettes, the girl group they launched in 1958. As the Winter Wonderettes, the Christmastime version of their group, they'll toss off a few of their holiday favorites.

When the party's rent-a-Santa fails to materialize, the girls try to improvise an evening's worth of holiday songs culled from just a few scant rehearsals from their high school days. Naturally, their showmanship wins out – and, unlike the original show, the girls endure only minor glitches.

Bean's script puts the focus on the contrasting personalities of the various Wonderettes, then as director, guides his cast in projecting the now-familiar character archetypes.

Although the bickering of their teen years is now well behind them, and the young ladies band together to keep the party from being a flop, Bean introduces just enough conflict to keep things interesting.

The show opens with the girls' recoining of "Mr. Sandman" as "Mr. Santa," followed by a "Rockin' Christmas" medley of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Little Saint Nick" (by the Beach Boys' Mike Love and Brian Wilson) and "A Marshmallow World," with the girls taking turns as lead singer.

This version of "Wonderettes" offers much in terms of the mood of the material: In "It's Christmas Time All Over the World," we hear the phrase "Merry Christmas" in several languages. The soft, gentle 1941 ballad "Snowfall" is one of a handful of rarely heard treats. Betty Jean's heartfelt "Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day" nicely contrasts with the frothy "Run, Rudolph, Run."

The always provocative Cindy Lou gets the bulk of the laugh lines, as when Suzy notes "You make everything sound dirty." Cindy: "It's a gift."

Whereas the original show featured in-fighting and bickering among the girls, here, Bean's characters are obviously dedicated to maintaining harmony to honor the holiday spirit. Accordingly, the mood of this "Wonderettes" is mostly playful throughout the evening.

What competition we do see is the escalating one-upsmanship between Betty Jean and Cindy Lou which peaks during the riotous number "We Wanna See Santa Do the Mambo."

Malone wrings laughs in similar fashion when Suzy awkwardly tries to combine her vocals of the seldom-heard 1951 song "Suzy Snowflake" with lead-footed stabs at tap-dancing before breaking into an actual, and impressive, tap routine.

While John Vaughan's choreography enhances a potentially static show, it's Bean and Brian Baker's selection and arrangements of holiday musical material, and the cast's incomparable delivery of the songs, that makes "Winter Wonderettes" worth its weight in candy canes.

Bad girl Cindy Lou has to show her sincere side, of course, before making up with BFF Betty, a process that starts with Warne's softly sultry, confessional delivery of the wonderful number "All Those Christmas Clichés" and finishes with Jackson's equally honest take on "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"

A bubbly, upbeat medley of holiday "bells" songs and an enjoyably loose "Santa Baby" cap the performance. The final shower of snow crystals from above is a winning special effect that epitomizes all the show has to offer.